My mom, ever the comedian, would say, “Yes, I like looking at you.”
My siblings found all of this hilarious. Secretly, I’m sure they were cheering me on. I was the one fighting most of the battles since they were all much older, except for Alex, who had his own negotiations to navigate, usually involving staying out late with friends.
My parents managed to come to terms with me on the school dance. I went with my friend Michael from my church youth group. His dad drove him over to my house before the dance, and Michael awkwardly handed me my corsage. Mom did buy me a nice dress, blue with a sweetheart neckline.
I know how much I pushed my parents. For me to tell my dad, “I’m going out with a boy, and I won’t be back until after midnight,” and for my dad to say yes, that’s huge. I was taking steps, but they were taking leaps. It was a real diplomacy act. They had their traditions and values, and I was growing up in a different world, a different culture. I had to try not to get too far ahead of them, and they had to try to catch up with me. Even though I didn’t fully realize it at the time, my parents were good sports about all of this. And they were smart too. They knew that the tighter parents hold on to their kids, the more the kids want to break away.
I wish the resettlement system for refugees could help mentor parents—not to tell them how to raise their kids, but to help them understand the new culture their children are experiencing. Parents have to learn how to raise their kids in a foreign land. Kids need guidance from their parents, but their parents have no idea what influences their children are facing in their new world. In my experience, the schools never called my parents to discuss me, probably because of the language barrier. My parents were on their own.
I also wish the resettlement program offered counseling for refugees. They are survivors of trauma. Moving them from here to there isn’t enough. We have to care about the people, and help them deal with their past. How can they become a part of a new society when they have never dealt with the terrors of their past? People sometimes say to me, “Oh, you’re so lucky.” When people say that, I kind of want to punch them in the face. Just because you resettle people doesn’t mean their lives are suddenly perfect. I lost my little sister in a massacre, fell into the depths of poverty, and fled my homeland. All that, to get to America.
TWENTY-THREE
AS MORE SURVIVORS OF OUR MASSACRE made their way to America, we began to connect with one another on Facebook, as we were all scattered across the country. And we decided to meet up once a year for a reunion, on the anniversary of the attack in August. We would meet in different states around the country each year, reconnect, and remember.
We elected members of our community to organize the events. I’ll never forget my first reunion, in St. Louis, Missouri. I saw so many familiar faces, including two of my best friends from the refugee camp, Inge and Desire. I had sat with Inge on the morning after the massacre, paralyzed by the bloody scene before us. He had managed to resettle in Virginia with his uncle. When we saw each other, we hugged, hard, and I cried, my tears wetting his shirt. We didn’t say much. We didn’t need words. We each knew what the other was feeling. I couldn’t believe my old friend from that devastating day was right there in front of me. Memories of that nightmarish morning came crashing back.
The gathering was intense. There was not a lot of talking, but a lot of crying. We hugged and held each other close. We sang the old gospel songs of our people. Every time I saw people’s faces, it took me back to the last time I had seen them in the camp. I saw a girl named Kama from my tent. She had lost her parents and brother in the massacre. This was the first time I had seen her since that night. Now living with her grandmother in America, she had been badly burned in the attack, the scars stretching across one side of her body. She used to play with my sister Deborah. I thought about how random it was that we had survived when so many others had not. The people who you thought would survive—the teenage boys, the able-bodied people—didn’t necessarily make it. But young girls like us did. I will never know why.
At one point, we all watched footage of the morning after the attack. There had been some reporters with cameras there early that morning, interviewing officials. The vice president of Congo spoke, as did the president of Burundi. We saw images of dead bodies and limbs strewn across the camp. The grounds were still smoking from the fire. It was the first time I had seen the footage, and it brought me back. I cried, and Inge reached over and held my hand. I could tell he was trying not to cry himself. People around us were sobbing, but we were all together, bonded for life, and there was comfort in that. We had all been through the same ordeal together. No one was there saying, “I’m sorry for your loss.”
But I still had not faced my past. I was trying so hard to navigate my conflicting worlds at school and at home, I left it buried in the back of my mind.
I did have one escape from this constant internal struggle: a church choir that my dad started, like the one he had formed in Rwanda. I was less furious at God these days, thanks to Dad’s recovery. My siblings and I began singing at local churches. Over time, we taught the American kids in church to sing with us as well. We spent hours teaching them how to sing in Swahili. We would teach them how to pronounce different words, like upendo, which means “love.” Many of the songs were about God’s love. Some words in Swahili have a silent “n,” which was always a pronunciation challenge. When my friends goofed up with the language, it made me laugh. “This is how I feel when I mess up in English!” I said.
When we performed with the American kids, audiences were wowed. I loved singing. It was freeing. We raised some money from our performances and sent it back to the kids from our tribe in Africa. We called our group the Foundation of Hope Ministries.
Our choir began singing at churches around the Northeast. My sister Princesse would give an introduction to the performance, describing our history. One night, when we were getting ready to sing at a church in Pennsylvania, Princesse didn’t feel well. The mother of one of the kids asked me to give the introduction. “You’re the next most fluent,” she said.
Oh no! I thought. I couldn’t imagine standing up and speaking in English to an audience of adults. But I didn’t have a lot of time to think about it. Someone had to do it, and I found myself agreeing. I had a copy of the speech, and I figured I could read the words Princesse had written. I stood up in front of everyone and began to speak, my voice trembling. I was self-conscious about my accent and my English, worried that I would bungle the words.
“My name is Sandra Uwiringiyimana. My family and I are from the Democratic Republic of the Congo,” I began. I read the first part of the speech, explaining the history of the Banyamulenge people. I got to the part about the Gatumba massacre, and I paused. My eyes blurred with tears, and I searched the audience for help from my siblings, but none came. I could barely read the words on the page, and they didn’t feel right to me. I stopped for a moment and caught my breath. I looked up and started speaking from memory. I had never thought about what I would say to an audience, so I was unsure if anything I was saying made sense. I simply spoke from the heart. For the first time, I let it all out. Raw memories tumbled forth about my war-ridden childhood and the brutal refugee camp. I described how we searched for Deborah’s body on the morning after the massacre. I moved forward to our life in Rwanda after the attack, when it was a quest to find drinking water. I looked out at the congregation, and everyone was crying, including my mom.
I could see that my words stunned people. They looked angry, too, as they learned what we had endured. It made me feel angry as well. I wish I could have told the congregation that my experience was unique, an isolated event. But it wasn’t. Millions of people have been uprooted and displaced by war. In fact, I was shocked that the audience was shocked. I had grown up in a land where war was so common, we basically sighed and said, “Oh man, this again?” Any given day, you could be on the run. There, it would have been unusual to go for an entire school year without b
eing interrupted by war.
At the same time, as I watched the people in the church cry, I had a realization: They cared. I had assumed that people in America did not care. But in that instant, I realized they did. They just didn’t know our story. They didn’t know what life was like in a refugee camp, or how it felt to endure a massacre. In America, we live in a world where Kim Kardashian dominates the news, not massacres in Africa.
My perspective shifted on that night. Suddenly, I wanted people to know. I wanted people to know about Deborah, about how her life was taken. I wanted Americans to know that my people were not some kind of strange beings “over there,” but people like them—people with hobbies and dreams and talents.
I gave more talks at our performances, sometimes with Princesse, sometimes on my own. The more I talked, the more I cried. I was exhausted after each talk, and would fall asleep in the car on the way home from the performance. But I liked letting people know what we had been through, describing the plight of refugees. Perhaps I was helping foster understanding between cultures, in some small way.
Still, I carried tremendous anger about the massacre and about how Deborah had been taken from me. Our choir group preached forgiveness, but I did not forgive. I could not let my anger go. I thought that the burning pain in my chest was Deborah. And I needed to hold on to that pain, in order to hold on to Deborah. If I let that pain and anger go, I would be letting her go. I would be letting her down, letting all of my people down. And so I held on to it. I held on to the pain. I held on for her.
In time, some of that anger began to fade, or rather, to shift. It happened gradually, as I kept singing and talking to people at churches. I thought about how so many of the killers at the massacre in Gatumba were teenagers—kids who had been taught to hate us, but did not know why they hated us. I thought about how the parents of the killers were the ones who had taught the kids to hate. This all started because someone hated someone. And so I stopped feeling so angry at the killers. Of course, I wanted the perpetrators to be held responsible, and if I saw Deborah’s killers standing in front of me today, I don’t know if I could forgive them. But I tried to take a broader view: The people who shot the bullets were part of a cycle of hate that they had been taught since they were born. Hate killed my sister, and I didn’t want to be part of that cycle.
I started thinking about Deborah differently too. I had been focusing on the horrid few seconds when the bullets took her life, but she had lived six years before that. I thought about those years and the times I had with her that I cherished. It was such a short time to know and to love someone, but it was six years of good memories, versus a few seconds of tragedy.
I was more determined than ever to keep Deborah’s memory alive. Sometimes, my mom would introduce me to people as the youngest child, and it bothered me deeply. Deborah was the youngest. I wanted everyone to know.
I would correct Mom, saying, “I’m the second youngest. We lost my little sister.”
Mom would sigh and say yes. I’m sure she was exhausted by having to explain it all the time. But I wanted to explain it every single time. And I still couldn’t shake that inexplicable feeling that Deborah would come back one day. I think because we had never been able to have a funeral, to visit her grave, to mourn her properly, it never became real to me.
“You can’t escape death, no matter how young or old you are,” Mom told me. “When it’s your day, it’s your day.”
I tried to accept that. But Deborah’s day came far too soon.
TWENTY-FOUR
IN MY JUNIOR YEAR OF HIGH SCHOOL, THE annual reunion of my people was held in nearby Syracuse, New York, and my brother Alex and I started a project that would change the course of my life. I was still on my campaign with the choir to help people understand our experience, and a friend at church named Joanna suggested that I take portraits of my people and interview them about their experiences. She said a local gallery in Rochester, called the Visual Studies Workshop, had been showing photography from genocides around the world, and perhaps we could do an exhibit there. I loved the idea, even though the gallery seemed like a pipe dream. Joanna lent me her camera, and I took it to the reunion.
Taking portraits of my people was such a moving experience, I felt as if my heart began to heal. It was so touching that people would share their thoughts and memories with me. Their trust meant everything. For the pictures, we had a simple white screen for a backdrop, and people could sit or stand for their portrait, whatever made them feel comfortable. Many chose to sit. I took most of the photos, while Alex worked on perfecting the lighting, with some help from Joanna. We were learning; we barely knew what we were doing. We didn’t expect anything major to come from it. We saw it as an adventure. Joanna was advising us, coaching us on how to find good angles.
In the portraits, I wanted to show that my people had not been defeated. I aimed to show their energy, their life. I took a picture of Kama, the girl who had been burned as a child in the attack. No one thought she would survive her injuries, but here she was, a young woman now with such strength. My friend Desire sat for me too. Seeing him sitting there, smiling, made me smile too. He asked if he should smile for the photo or not, and I said to do whatever he felt. We were all family, taking family portraits. I recorded videos of people sharing their memories as well. My mom talked about how it felt to flee for her life.
“We were born into wars,” Mom said. “We grew up fleeing from place to place, and our fathers and our mothers carried us on their backs. We also started fleeing with our own children on our backs, because every year, we expected persecution.”
Afterward, Joanna helped guide Alex and me through the process of putting together an exhibit. I decided on the size of the portraits, the frames—every little detail. To my amazement, the gallery accepted the exhibit—twenty-two portraits of my people, accompanied by write-ups and videos about their lives. Alex and I did a video of ourselves as well, describing why we had decided to do the project, and how I wanted to show the resilience and dignity of my people. It made me think about who I was, and about what I wanted to do. For the first time, I felt strongly that I wanted to be an activist, a voice for the displaced. This is who I need to be, I told myself.
On opening night, my entire family arrived. The portraits came to life. The pictures looked poignant and powerful, looming large on the walls. My parents were impressed. They watched as people came up to me and asked me questions about the exhibit.
“Who are all these people?” Mom asked, looking around at the attendees.
People from the local art community had come, along with classmates and friends. The following week, I gave talks at the gallery for high school students and refugee kids. They had a slew of questions, and it felt good to be able to talk with young people about my experience. I could tell they were truly interested. They walked around and studied the pictures and read all the quotes from my people. They asked about individuals, and about how they were related or connected. I found it energizing, talking to kids. They wanted to know about people, not about war.
Around this time, a producer for a big women’s conference in New York City, the Women in the World Summit, learned about the exhibit and reached out to me through the gallery. I hadn’t heard of the summit, but when I Googled it, I saw that it was run by a famous magazine editor, Tina Brown. I saw that Hillary Clinton, Angelina Jolie, and activists from all over the world participated in these summits. I connected with the producer, Mark Young, and he invited me to speak on a panel at the summit, which would be held at Lincoln Center. He said it in such a chill way, like it was nothing special, but I thought: What? Lincoln Center was home to world-famous operas and ballets.
I tried to tell my mom about it, but I was so excited, I could barely get the words out. I was jumping up and down in the living room. When I get wound up, I speak fast, using a jumbled mix of English and Kinyamulenge. Mom, who was busy cleaning the house at the time, looked at me like I was nuts.
“
Why don’t you stop jumping around and tell me what’s going on,” she said. “Sit down quietly and explain it to me. I can’t understand you.”
“Somebody in New York saw my exhibit,” I said. “There’s a summit. It’s huge, Mom. The Women in the World Summit. They invited me!”
Princesse was there and started Googling. When she read about the summit, she said, “Wow!”
I was still hopping up and down.
“You’re crazy,” Mom said. “You’re so American.” Mom was not one to get overly excited about things. She came and looked at the computer screen.
“What are they going to do for you?” she asked. To my mom, the most important thing was always education. She thought everything else was a distraction.
“Mom, it’s an opportunity,” I said. “More people will learn about us and the Banyamulenge people.”
Dad wandered in, and I told him the news. He got it. “It’s a platform to help educate people,” he said, low-key as always.
Then he sat me down and said, “You need to think about this. Think about what you want to say. This is important.”
Soon after, the producer said I would be appearing on a panel with Angelina Jolie and Madeleine Albright, the former secretary of state, talking about war. I couldn’t imagine it. Me, onstage with Angelina and the former secretary of state? And this had sprung from our photo exhibit at a little gallery in Rochester? I told my parents, explaining to them who Angelina Jolie and Madeleine Albright were. They were impressed. I also learned that a journalist would be interviewing me for a profile on the Daily Beast, scheduled to run at the time of the summit. I spoke with the writer Abigail Pesta for the story, telling her about my past. Then I headed to Lincoln Center with Princesse for a rehearsal the day before the event. The rest of my family would watch the event live-streamed online.
How Dare the Sun Rise Page 12